#weavewithshadow can tell you

[animentality]

Which companions to romance as a Durge?? Used to be on team Astarion but now I just feel like he is too stupid(canon smooth brain, he is lovely tho) for my durge who was/is in into Gortash.. :(

GALE. THE ANSWER IS GALE.

[chronurgy]

10 characters, 10 fandoms

Thanks for the tag @rowanisawriter!

Tagging: @weavewithshadow, @bhaalsbabe, anyone else who wants to play!

Oooo this is going to be hard because I tend to get really into multiple characters from the same thing, but let's go! In no particular order:

1. Essek Thelyss - Critical Role

He's a war criminal. He's a prodigy. He's a traitor. He's a time and gravity wizard. He's a heretic in a theocracy where his mother is a living saint. He floats everywhere instead of walking. When the gang asks if they're going to have to kill him, he laughs and says "I'd like to see you try". He crushes someone to death with gravity simply by closing his fist. "My reasons [for treason] weren't good, but they were important". He goes from not having cared about anyone in 120 years to caring so much about a bunch of weirdos in like, 6 weeks. He made his father so mad during an argument that the guy stormed off and died. What's not to love? He makes me so insane.

Honorable mention: Caleb Widogast

2. Anders - Dragon Age

My favorite chaotic bisexual disaster man. The contrast between awakening anders and da2 anders is so fascinating for me. He's this carefree guy, except he isn't really that carefree, is he? He escapes over and over and over, swimming across the lake even. He hates the circle and hates the Templars just as much, he's just funnier about it. When you start adding up the year in solitary, Karl, the fact that he must have seen all the injuries in the circle as a spirit healer, it starts becoming very clear why he is the way he is. He also sucks! He's petty, he's mean, and he's so up his own ass about how right he thinks he is about everything. But he also runs a clinic for the poorest of the poor, dodging Templars and freeing mages all the while. He does the excellent wizard hubris thing of taking the future into his own hands, even if it kills people (suck my nuts elthina). He loves a romanced Hawke so much, even as he experiences this greater calling. Plus Grey wardens are cool as hell and he loves cats.

Honorable mention: mage!Hawke

3. Merlin - BBC Merlin

This show manages to be both ridiculous and sad. Merlin is such a happy go lucky, cheerful character at the beginning, then we watch as things just keep getting worse. He cannot seem to win. By the end, that cheerfulness seems much closer to a mask he's desperately clinging to than anything else. He's an expert liar and manipulator, he's a killer, and he's so, so alone. If he ever tells anyone that he's a sorcerer, he'll be executed. And he lives in the shadow of that for years, unable to be himself even with the people he's closest to. Also characters who have their eyes change colors when using their powers my beloved.

4. Daenerys Targaryen - ASOIAF

I love her chapters - there's so much interesting and human depth to her struggles (even when her struggles are fantastical). She struggles to know how to rule, and rule well. She takes hostages but loves them too much to kill them. She struggles to create and maintain a peace for her people even as that peace asks things of her she cannot bear. She worries what it says about her that her children are monsters and she both loves and fears them. She desperately wants a simple, loving life but is also so, so doomed to never have that. She's a queen and a dragon rider and a young woman trying to understand the world. She's great. (I don't care about the tv show I'm talking books here)

Honorable mentions: Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister

5. Gale Dekarios - Baldur’s Gate

Oh yeah, another hubris wizard. He's funny and has this easy, good natured charm that makes it possible to ignore that he's an absolute FREAK. He's got one of my favorite wizard traits - a strong ends justify the means streak. He points, very genteelly, at all the ways power and knowledge drive and corrupt. He's a sweetheart but he brags all the time. Except it isn't bragging, because he can back it up. He can really, genuinely, become a god. His relationship with the dark urge also makes me insane, because I think in some ways he's both the clearest eyed about what will happen to them and the one most willing to meet them where they are and also desperately wants to believe they're a good person, even when it's clear that they aren't. His line about how their life is no longer theirs to lead, only to follow to a dark urge who embraces Bhaal is incredible. The diverging paths of who he can become over the course of the game are fascinating and there's so much depth to him. He's great. Oh, he also excuses his cat's crimes. Love that in a man.

Honorable mentions: Enver Gortash, The Dark Urge

6. Camilla Hect - The Locked Tomb

She's the most composed, controlled, meticulous batshit fucking crazy woman in the world. Unstoppable force vibes. Instead of moving on after her necromancers death she pieced together tiny fragments of his skull and then shared her body with him. She's a genius and she can't let go of her insanely codependent relationship, even when it kills her (but honestly Paul seems pretty cool and I'm excited to learn more about them)

Honorable mention: Palamedes Sextus

7. The Jovial Contrarian - Fallen London

A little more niche, this one! I sometimes find that characters in fallen london can sort of pale in interest compared to the overall lore and happenings, but the Jovial Contrarian is one of my favorites. He loves arguing and will argue with anyone about anything at any time. If you have regular debating lessons with him, people will hide behind couches rather than face you. He's part of the calendar council and hates the masters but also wants a solution that isn't the liberation of the night. Anytime his name is mentioned you know you're about to read something ridiculous. Fun guy!

Honorable mentions: Poor Edward (incredibly narsty. great villain), The Eagle, Ascendant (they have like, 3 lines of lore and they're all fantastic)

8. Midna - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I remember playing twilight princess for the first time and I just immediately fell in love with Midna. She's snarky, she's mean, her design is cool as hell, and I really loved her arc as she grew to really care about people over the course of the game. She remains firmly the best Zelda companion in my mind.

9. Elim Garak - Star Trek

You always knew it was going to be a great episode when Garak showed up. He always feels 30 seconds from chewing on the scenery and it is fantastic. He's an exiled spy and maybe a little bit of a monster and he never pretends otherwise. His lines to Sisko in "In the Pale Moonlight," telling him that he must have known what Garak would do, and that if the price of winning the war is Sisko's self respect then he'd call that a bargain are some of my favorite in an episode that already has a lot of really good lines. Aw man I wanna watch DS9 now.

Honorable mentions: Julian Bashir, Captain Picard, Tasha Yar (but wasn't she lame and poorly written? Yes. But young me was extremely taken with this aggressive short-haired woman for reasons I could not articulate at the time 🥴)

10. Morgan Yu - Prey (2017)

Okay so if you haven't played Prey stop reading right now and go buy it. Don't look up any spoilers or plot or anything just do it. If you liked dishonored or deathloop you'll love it. Now: who IS Morgan Yu? Who WAS Morgan Yu? Are they even the same person any more? How culpable are they? How culpable were they? Part of the reason Morgan is so endlessly fascinating to me is because we'll never know. How integral are memories to the continuity of the self? Why did you do what you did? Did you, the person standing here right now, even do it? The game just delivers gut punch after gut punch to Morgan and I love it and I love them (whoever they might have been).

Overall honorable mentions: the outsider from dishonored, garrus from mass effect, vimes and vetinari from discworld, and all my dnd characters (shout out especially to Hermès Montclair who fucked a dragon, died (unrelated to said dragon fucking), then came back wrong and fucked the dragon again! No one's doing it like you baby)

[animentality]

@weavewithshadow fucking destroyed me by suggesting that maybe Gortash and the Dark Urge had an argument before they died and disappeared.

And Orin, pretending to be Gortash, asked them to meet him under the guise of maybe apologizing.

But then she killed them.

And Gortash didn't notice initially because they hadn't spoken in a while. But when he did notice, he started to get worried.

And then he knew that he'd fucked up, when they never came back.

And their stupid argument haunts his thoughts every night, and he wishes he could take it back. But he can't apologize to them, and probably never will...

Until he sees them again...and now...he still can't apologize. Because they can't even remember him.

He'll never get to say he was sorry, so instead he just tells them, let's start over.

Let's be allies again. I'm sorry that I didn't go looking for you, but it won't happen again, not this time.

Give me another chance.

We can start again.

[animentality]

like 70% of sex between durge and gortash was just fighting to see who would be on top. durge won more often bc they fight dirty (and in most cases are probably stronger), and gortash loved when they held him down and put him in his place. but sometimes gortash was so good at dirty talk and messing with durge's head they wanted him on top

I've spoken about this with @weavewithshadow and we agreed.

Bottoming does not = being a submissive.

In fact, you can bottom and tell your top to fuck you like an animal, and that's still you ordering them to give you pleasure, and them obeying.

There is power in you telling someone to take control.

In you saying they must give you what you want. This isn't about their pleasure, but your own, and you want to be thoroughly used.

But also. Listen. I hear you on the whole, superior strength thing. But I'd argue that strength doesn't matter at all in the bedroom. It's about the psychological, the emotional, the way both parties want to experience intimacy.

The Dark Urge's strength isn't what would let them top. It'd be psychological warfare, and they and Gortash are evenly matched in that department. They're equals in this too.

:)

[animentality]

(feel free to ignore if its not a topic you're comfty with) Since apparently, at least from what I can tell, durge can get pregnant/impregnate others regardless of gender, I wonder how much drama there would be if durge/Gortash ended up carrying a Bane baby. I highly doubt Bhaal would let that slide, because they all fucking hate each other, but it could lead to some fascinating interactions, especially if Orin found out. Anything to make this tragic romance worse, I'm all for

You know.

I know you probably think I'm uncomfortable with this ask, hence my delay in response.

But @weavewithshadow and I had this headcanon, that I wanted to post, but then deleted because it might've been...not everyone's cup of tea...

I had this idea that if the Dark Urge got pregnant and Gortash was the father, how absolutely vile would it be if Bhaal, who we know can literally dissolve the Dark Urge at will...

What if he terminated the pregnancy out of disgust, because how dare a Banite's flesh inhabit his own?

And then, what if Gortash found out? And he knew it was his, just based on timelines, and when the Dark Urge told him it happened, and how far along they'd been...Eurgh.

That has a lot of angst potential, anon, and I have absolutely thought about it.

But I won't talk about it more because I know that kind of puts the Dark Urge as afab, and not everyone is into that. I know the Dark Urge can technically impregnate and be impregnated, apparently, and they're not normal, but eh. The narrative clearly sees the Dark Urge as being male, since that's the default Durge...so I don't know.

Plus some people are very not into pregnancy in fanfic and headcanons.

I personally don't care much for pregnancy or childbirth as drama, but darkly, dementedly, I am intrigued by miscarriage in this circumstance as the source of angst.

The Dark Urge's body is not their own. Not being allowed to have any reproductive freedom...that's interesting to me. Especially when it comes to Gortash, who wouldn't even know if he wanted to be a father...

[animentality]

Hello durgetash lore holder, I have a question. What’s the general timeline for these two?

Do we have an idea on how old Gortash is or even how long he spent with his parents or in the hells?

I know he’s more than ten but that’s as useful as knowing Jesus is larger than a baby but smaller than a church.

OK please don't call me that because there are far smarter people out there who retain information better than my hole filled adhd brain. I'm making shit up based on my own disgusting fantasies.

I have played the game far more hours than the normal person, but that doesn't mean I actually know what the fuck happened before the game started.

it's also contradictory.

like the dark urge has a note that says outright, Gortash was a chosen of Bane before they first fought together.

but then Gortash's memoirs say they worked together before they were ever Chosens.

which doesn't make sense.

he also said that the gods came to them in a vision... and said to go hang out with Ketheric.

but like. no one can agree on whether or not the dark urge has been to moonrise more than once...

so did Gortash go alone???

but... there's a mindflayer colony down there... you'd think they might need to all work together to kill all the mindflayers and shit to get to the brain?

also, Gortash seems to imply that you and him came up with the plan, so...

so... ?

I have no idea.

I know I'm dumb and all, but I have also seen smart people who weren't sure of the timeline.

all I can tell you is that the dark urge is somewhere around 40. Gortash is supposed to be slightly younger. Orin is younger than both of them, and Ketheric was dead for a while before becoming the chosen of Myrkul and becoming immortal.

I think someone told me that the dark urge and gortash knew each other for at least 10 years though...

which doesn't... quite make sense, unless Gortash knew about the mindflayer colony for longer than he said he did...

but we also don't know how long it took to steal the crown of Karsus, so...

listen.

listen.

tell the people.

I am the holder of delusional Durgetash.

i don't know the canon lore all that well because it's WEIRD.

i also haven't seen all of Gortash's notes became I have yet to kill him anywhere but the Morphic Pool.

I need to buck up and kill him at wyrm's rock so I can see his desk notes.

but I haven't done it yet, because I hate killing him...

so.

sorry, anon.

weavewithshadow knows this stuff better than me. I go to them when I need confirmation on one of my shitposts.

also I think Gortash was pretty young when he got sold.

nowhere does it say specifically how old he was, but nubaldin called him "little" and nubaldin is a little guy himself, so maybe he was REALLLLLY young.

we are not sure.